10 septiembre 2015

Ichiro Lambe and his Elegy for a Dead World.

Para el artículo en español, clic aquí.When
you think about videogames, Super Smash Bros, Street Fighter, Megaman, Pacman,
Mario, and many more, come to your mind. Can you imagine one about writing?
Sure not, and you’d be surprised if you find out that there’s such a game.

It’s
called Elegy for a Dead World, created by Dejobaan Games, which president and
founder, Ichiro Lambe, I interviewed about.

It
was a normal day in Facebook when I saw my cousin tagged my in something that
catch my attention that pretty moment: A game intended for writers, maybe even
readers, whoever enjoys writing.

The
player controls a kind of spaceman who travels through three post-apocalyptic
worlds, each one of them based in a different poem from famous poets: Byron,
Keats and Shelly, and he writes about anything he sees, feels and hears.

Also,
Elegy comes whit many exercises that may help you to improve your writing
skills: Do it from a basic school girl point of view, write a love letter to
that significant other, a poem, and even a free style mood to write whatever
you want.

After
playing some sessions in it, the first I should say is: WHAT A GRAPHICS. I mean
it, they are one of the strongest points that Elegy has. The shape and colors
are not realistic, for sure, but the way they look and the atmosphere they
create makes you feel near to the three worlds in some strange way.

Another
strong point to Elegy is the sound, the music, even the silence in some cases.
When you’re writing about dead civilization, there’s nothing better than a good
background to inspire yourself, maybe a mute moment to think and write about
your lost memories, those who you miss, the love you’re never going to hear or
see again.

As
for the gameplay, it’s very simple. We won’t find monsters, epic battles or
tyrants to fight, but three dead planets whit the ashes of what they were,
infinite lands with untold stories we can write about.

You
will need only your arrow keys to go back and forth, to fly sometimes, and the
letter keys to write your stories. Simple, light, common, and nothing so
explosive, but great to exercise your inner writer (which is what the game is
intended to).

You
don’t really need to be a New York Times Best Selling author to play it; if you
can write, are creative, can think in an interesting text, either narrative or
poem, you can play/write your own Elegy for a Dead World.

Now
that you know about the game from my perspective, my own point of view, you
should know its creator’s, shouldn’t you? Here they are.

1. Tell us a
little bit about yourself, who is Ichiro Lambe? What does he do in Dejobaan?

I'm
founder and president. I also generally lead product development on our games.
Sometimes, when they let me, I pop down and start coding things, but that can
get dangerous, and is best left to the experts.

2. What made you
decide to create/work on videogames?

As
the story goes, when I was a kid, my father sat me down in front of a TI 99/4A
instead of tossing me a baseball. I found it fascinating! In subsequent years,
I would tinker with everything I could -- I remember, one time, hooking up
photoresistors to my Atari 800 to create a sort-of shooting gallery you could
play with a flashlight. Fun times.

3. Now, starting
with Elegy for a Dead World, how did come the idea of a game about writting?
How was the experience of creating three worlds based of three different poems?
What helped you in the process?

Then-fellow Indie
Game Collective developer Ziba Scott and I sat down with some of the
others to do a week-long project where you just explored a scrolling landscape
and tried to suss out what was going on. Here's a bit more on
that:

4. Why that name?
Is there a story behind it you can tell? And, maybe the most important
question, what is an Elegy?

It
was originally (tongue-in-cheek) called "Dead Civilizations Pickled
Ginger," because it was a game about post-apocalyptic worlds that was
meant to be a palate cleanser for us devs. Obviously, we wanted
something more serious to launch, so we figured that you were creating little
poems/laments (the titular elegies) about these long-forgotten civilizations
(the dead worlds).

5. In the web, you
say that we players can take screenshots while playing Elegy and publish a book
with them, could you explain more about it?

Yup;
once you write your story, you can export it all to disk as images, and if you
like, go to a website like Blurb.com and have those turned into a book. I've
done it. It's real! And neat.

6. Which part was
the hardest while creating Elegy?

Figuring
out what the game was about, actually! Was it a side-scrolling walking
simulator? How heavy-handed did we want to be about what you found on each
world? We tried all sorts of things before we landed on the final design.

7. You selected
three poems to develop the game, and the three of them were about dead worlds,
post-apocaliptic, is there any other you could mention?

Gosh;
there are a bunch of good ones, especially in romanticism, which is the
period we chose. I mean, Poe was a contender -- his imagery is all about dark
omens. But it wasn't British, so we avoided him. Also, IIRC, he had a thing for
his cousin.

8. I really loved
Keats' world, is there one, between the three worlds in the game, that you call
your favorite?

I
think you picked (co-developer) Ziba's favorite, based on this poem. It's
all about Keats' fears that he was going to die before finishing all the grand
works that were in his head (he did). I'm partial to Byron's world,
as Darkness is so evocative:

“I
had a dream, which was not all a dream.

The
bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars

Did
wander darkling in the eternal space,

Rayless,
and pathless, and the icy earth

Swung
blind and blackening in the moonless air;

Morn
came and went—and came, and brought no day,

And
men forgot their passions in the dread

Of
this their desolation”

Yikes.

9. Do you think
you could make another "writting game" in the future?

Sure;
I'd have to ponder how, though. It'd need to be different.

10. What are you
working on right now? Could you tell us something about it?

We
haven't announced anything yet, but we're working on an RPG about interstellar
exploration, where you land on a bunch of planets and try to make first contact
with the people who live there (the opposite of Elegy). Here's a quote from my
sorta-dev-log:

Anecdote
from an as-yet-unannounced RPG: you can talk a warehouse guard into unlocking
his facility's front gate by saying the right things. The game logic checks if
there's a locked door near you, and opens it. The game doesn't do a weight
check, so you can pick up the guard, sweet talk him, and roam around the map,
getting him to unlock everything.

11. Which would be
your advice for those who want to work on videogames too?

Do
something small but amazing. And network like crazy: everyone I know who's
landed a decent job got it by getting to know people in the industry.

12. Thanks for
your time and for bringing Elegy to our own world! Hope to hear again from you
and Dejobaan!